Non-Chalcedonian Writers

[Leo_The_Great]

I will keep it short and sweet.

Our dialogues with the Coptic Orthodox Church have expressly revealed that we hold a Common Christology, and that they are NOT heretics subscribing to Monophysitism/Eutychianism, or apollinarianism. THis is the Churches official position.

Given that, how should we view the Christological writings of say, Severus of Antioch? I have read fragments of his writing and he EXPLICITLY states that the one Nature is the Union of Godhead and manhood without mingling, confusion, change, separation or division. Think of the phrase “hypostatic union.” Well, “Nature” is what they call the “union.”

Like body and soul. Both hypostases (individually subsistent realities: flesh and soul) have their own natures, but after their union in man we speak of one Nature, since to BE MAN means to be united in this way.

Hence there is one Nature of God the Word incarnate, because it is the Nature of the Word incarnate to be UNITED :Godhead to manhood, without Change, confusion, division or separation.

So, how should we view these writers since they SHOULD/COULD be orthodox in their Christology?

 

[Badaliyyah]

For quite a while now, people have been arguing, rather successfully, that Severus of Antioch is, despite some ambiguous language at times, orthodox I think this has become a widely accepted position and this is what has allowed such good relations between Chalcedonians and certain non-Chalcedonians over the last decade.

Ian Torrance’s work on Severus was groundbreaking and very influential in this regard.

salaam.

 

[Leo_The_Great]

I am always intrigued by “melkites.” Which one are you? Antiochian, Alexandrian or Byzantine?

 

[Badaliyyah]

I am always intrigued by “melkites.” Which one are you? Antiochian, Alexandrian or Byzantine?

We are Antiochenes who are theologically and liturgically Byzantine.

 

[Leo_The_Great]

Does anyone have access to the writings of Dioscorus I of Alexandria or the acts of the Third Ephesian council of 475?

 

[Gregory_I]

THis is called the creed of Philoxenus. I was wondering whether any other ROman Catholics or Eastern Orthodox would contest its Substantial Orthodoxy:

REPLY TO BE MADE BY A MAN WHEN QUESTIONED AS TO HIS BELIEF (Brit. Mus. MS. Add. 14,529, fol. 69b)

I believe in a Trinity, a Trinity which can neither be reduced nor diminished to Two [Persons], nor added unto so that it becometh Four [Persons]. Nothing from the fulness thereof can be diminished, neither can it receive any other person from without. Everything which is outside this Trinity hath been created, but whatsoever is contained therein hath been from everlasting. And it is adorable; nothing outside of it is to be worshipped, and within it there is nothing which |xxxii worshippeth. Outside of it there is no other God at all, neither inside of it is there a man that hath been made. It diminisheth not in its Person, neither doth it add thereunto. In it, which hath existed for ever, there never began [to exist] a Person, and there doth not pass away therefrom a Person who hath come to an end.

Now therefore, one of the Persons of this Trinity came down by the mystery of depletion, and of the Holy Virgin became man. Inasmuch as He was God, His nature was not changed in its being, and no addition to His Person took place, but He remained the Only-begotten, even after He had taken upon himself a body. For the act of coming into being did not introduce into the Only-begotten another first-born, but shewed that the firstborn of the Virgin was the Only-begotten of the Father; for He, Who was the Only-begotten through His birth from the Eternal, Himself became the firstborn by His birth of the Virgin, And since God the Word, Who is of the Virgin, is the Only-begotten, and since because He became man of the Virgin He is the firstborn, the Only-begotten is the firstborn, and the firstborn is the Only-begotten.

And being Himself God, He is Son of God [and] Son of man; and Son of man [and Son of] God; Son of the Eternal [and] Son of the Virgin; Son of the Virgin [and] Son of the Eternal; the concealed revealed, and the revealed concealed; a spiritual corporeal Being, and a corporeal spiritual Being; a finite infinity; Who was upon the throne and was in the womb; Who was in the womb and was upon the throne; Son of God Son of man; Son of man Son of God; the visible invisible; the concealed |xxxiii and invisible visible; the passible impassible; the impassible passible ; the dead living, and the living dead ;

Who being in heaven was in Sheol, and Who being in Sheol was in heaven. The Only-begotten is One Who hath no number among those who belong to heaven or among those who belong to earth, for the attributes of the Only-begotten belong to the Only-begotten, and not unto various others, as those who are in error say. For do not exalted things belong to the exalted? and lowly things to the humble? and divine qualities to God? and human attributes to man? But to the exalted one who hath been abased belong lowly things; and of the God Who became man we must believe human things; of the hidden One who became revealed must we believe all contemptible things ; and to the infinite God Who of His own will became mortal man, and Who yet remained immortal God in His nature, belong suffering and death.

One of the Trinity became the Only-begotten of the Father, the Word God became the Son of man by the Virgin by taking upon Himself the body of our Nature, the nature of the Word remaining unchanged, and He Himself, One God, Who was of God, suffered and died for us. And because He became the Son of Man, and remained [so] in His life and also in His death even as He continued in His unchanging and eternal Being, He was also man in His Being.